Death Penalty and other Killing: The Destructive Effect on Us
by Fr. Jim Hewes
I have opposed the death penalty for years. My reasoning stems from a larger perspective than just the death penalty. It focuses not on the circumstances surrounding the crime or the killer, but the effect of our actions on those that approve of or carry out an execution.
Fr. Jim Hewes
Anguish
In the biblical book of Genesis after Cain had killed Abel he says to the Lord, “My punishment is too great to bear.” (Genesis 4:13) God had not done anything to Cain yet, so why does he say this? I never understood this until I read a book by S.L.A. Marshall, Men against Fire. Marshall was a colonel in the U.S. army during World War II. He wrote about men that he interviewed in over 400 infantry companies who were in direct combat in Europe and the Central Pacific during World War II. He was surprised to find that 80% to 85% of the soldiers they interviewed either didn’t fire their weapons or fired intentionally over the head of the enemy.
Another team interviewed soldiers in combat during the Vietnam War. They found a dramatic change-90-95% of those soldiers interviewed fired to kill the enemy (from “On Killing” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman p. 35).
What is the result of this change? The VA estimated there were tens of thousands of Vietnam Veterans who were homeless at one time, and thousands of Vietnam Vets have been in our nation’s prisons and jails since the war ended. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnam Veterans have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Thousands of Vietnam veterans have committed suicide.
These studies have been validated for me in personal conversations I’ve had with Vietnam Veterans. In particular, one veteran told me that he had killed quite a few people in Vietnam, but what haunted him the most was that he had killed a woman there. Because of this, he had been unable to find any peace. Then he paused and told me that he was terminal with cancer and he didn’t have long to live. He then asked me: “What do I do?”
Another Vietnam veteran who was in a parish I was assigned to as a young priest became a friend. He wouldn’t talk about his experience of the war. Yet he did share with me that there was a terrible strain in his life from the war and that he had been seeing a psychiatrist for years. He died a few years ago. The death certificate would have listed the cause as a heart attack, but I know it was from a heart that was broken by his involvement in the war.
All the articles coming out in the last few years in terms of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan echo this. In fact, a report came out which stated: “Those who acknowledged killing someone in combat were more likely to have PTSD symptoms, anger, relationship problems.” Reports have come out about the rise of divorce, domestic abuse, and abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs by returning veterans. Adm. Michael Mullen, formerly a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at one time that the military faces a suicide “crisis.” It has been reported many times that the mental health problems from those returning from our current wars threaten to overwhelm the system of care for them.
This was also reflected in a woman in one of my parishes who asked me to see her father who was Christian. He was in his 80’s and had been depressed for quite awhile. He came to talk to me and told me the source of his depression for all these years began when he was a young soldier in WWII. His outfit had captured German soldiers and then they would all of a sudden disappear. He knew they had been executed, and he said or did nothing. In fact, all he did was carry the ammunition, but he felt he had contributed to the loss of lives. He could never reconcile what he was a part of during the war, and this had stayed with him all these years since then. He had not really talked about this, which I find true with many veterans that I have met, and it doesn’t matter which war they were in.
I have witnessed this same reality in another area with men and many women who have had abortions, who I have seen over the last 18 years in coordinating Project Rachel (an incredible post abortion healing program). In this light, I remember a woman who went through Project Rachel once remarked, “none of us want to be known for the worse moment of our life.” When we continue to kill for whatever reason like Cain, we will be left with the same wound in the depth of our soul. Acts of killing, whether done through those involved in a war or other means, like the death penalty, although having different reasons for justification, ultimately fuel one’s own destructiveness.
I believe the real reason for this is that there is something intrinsic within us as human beings that resists killing other people. No matter what justification we use, when we violate this basic part of our humanity, we not only take a life, we also destroy ourselves in the process.
Fueling Our Own Destructiveness
When I heard Sister Helen Prejean (author of “Dead Man Walking”) speak she stated that the men she worked with on death row did such horrible crimes that she could see why some people felt they didn’t deserve to live, but if we execute them, she said that it will have a destructive effect on us and give the offender another victim — whether it is an individual on a jury, a warden who pulls the switch, a politician who votes for the death penalty or society as a whole.
This insight is reflected by Jim Willett (in a New York Times article, October 9, 2000) who had presided over 75 executions states: “Sometimes I wonder whether people really understand what goes on down here and the effect it has on us. Killing people, even people you know are heinous criminals, is a gruesome business and it takes a harsh toll
I met Marietta Jaeger Lane whose seven-year-old daughter Susie was kidnapped and eventually brutally murdered. At first, she said that she wanted to kill the murderer with her bare hands. In time she learned to forgive the person who did this horrendous act, but her husband could not let go of the rage and desire for revenge. Although a young man in good health, he died prematurely. Marietta said that she was convinced his inability to forgive took his life.
I was able to talk one time with Bud Welch, whose daughter Julie Marie was one of the ones killed in the Oklahoma City bombings. He said his anger made him become crazy. It wasn’t until he let go of this rage (including a meeting with Timothy McVeigh’s father which helped) that he finally found peace.
There is in our world a raging furnace of evil, violence, and death. Acts of killing, whether done by an individual in a murder, the state through an execution, by an abortionist in a clinic, or our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan, continue to fuel this raging inferno of our own destruction.
Conclusion
I in no way want to diminish the evil and harm caused by people that commit terrible crimes; nor the loss and heartache experienced by families whose loved one has been affected by a horrible act of violence, which has taken the gift of life, in the death of someone precious to them. But the true meaning of justice is not about death but about bringing life into our world.
We cannot end the violence around us by committing more violence, such as executions. That’s why if people are oppressed in some way, if they don’t go through a process of healing and forgiveness, when they come to power, they’ll become the new oppressors. As Richard Rohr says, “Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.” The cycle of violence continues.
Likewise, when a person dehumanizes anyone, even someone on death row, they end up dehumanizing themselves as well. They become the new oppressors. If we continue to kill for whatever reason, we like Cain will be left with the same anguish to endure for the rest of our lives.
Father Hewes helped found the Diocese of Rochester Human Life Commission in 1978, with our charter clearly being a consistent life ethic, five years before Cardinal Bernardin gave his famous talk at Fordham on the CLE.
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For more of our posts on psychological impact of killing, see:
Healing for the Perpetrators: The Psychological Damage from Different Types of Killing / Sarah Terzo
Abortion Doctor Says: We are the Executioners / Sarah Terzo
“But I was Empty”: The Story of a Doctor Who Left Planned Parenthood / Sarah Terzo
For more posts on the death penalty, see:
Racism and the Death Penalty / David Cruz-Uribe
Is the Death Penalty Unethical? / Hannah Cox
Why Conservatives Should Oppose the Death Penalty / Destiny Herndon-de la Rosa
Dialog on Life Issues: Avoiding Some Obstacles to Communication
by John Whitehead
An essential part of consistent life ethic advocacy is learning how to talk about the ethic or specific life issues to people with differing views. In a recent post for us, Josh Brahm of the Equal Rights Institute (ERI) offered for constructive dialog. I offer further thoughts, partly inspired by ERI’s work on the topic.
The Cooperative Ideal and Adversarial Reality
Dialog about life issues should ideally be cooperative, with people sharing and considering each other’s views, identifying common ground and differences, and listening to criticisms. While they probably won’t agree, they’ll at least reach a better understanding. Perhaps, over time and after enough good dialogs, people might reconsider.
This ideal is rarely realized. Most dialogs are not cooperative but adversarial. Each side behaves like a lawyer conducting an aggressive cross-examination of a witness. Each treats the other as someone whose views are suspect and deserve rigorously skeptical, if not hostile, scrutiny. Each side tries to trip up the other, to catch the other in a contradiction, inconsistency, or other fault.
How does this approach prevent people from honestly answering questions about their views?
No one wants to answer questions posed to trap them or make them look foolish. No one wants to be in the vulnerable position of the witness being cross-examined by the hostile lawyer. Therefore, people in an adversarial dialog will likely do two things.
- To not be trapped, they’ll avoid giving direct or clear answers when they don’t have some ready-made, “safe” reply.
- They’ll try going on the offensive, to reverse the lawyer-witness approach.
When this back-and-forth takes over a dialog, people will end up not only still disagreeing (which was probably inevitable) but not even understanding each other’s views. Why should they? The whole dialog was directed not to mutual understanding and an honest exploration of the issue, but to avoiding being trapped and humiliated.
Two types of questions can especially lead a dialog to become adversarial and unproductive.
Difficult Question #1: Hard Cases
Someone will frequently ask about “hard cases” that seemingly challenge a commitment to nonviolence.
- On abortion: “What if a woman becomes pregnant because of rape?” or “What if continuing a pregnancy would threaten a woman’s life?”
- On the death penalty: “What about a remorseless killer who killed people in prison?” or “What about when convicted murderers have escaped from prison?”
- On euthanasia: “What if a terminally ill person is in excruciating pain that medicine cannot relieve?”
- On war: “What if a ruthless tyrant is committing genocide?”
There’s an obvious objection to such questions (which I will get to), but they aren’t inherently unreasonable. Considering the full implications of a commitment to nonviolence and how to apply the consistent life ethic to extreme situations is worthwhile. Moreover, as Josh Brahm and Rachel Crawford of ERI explain in on questions about abortion in cases of rape, questions about hard cases help people in dialog fully understand what the other person believes.
When questions about hard cases come up, however, we might feel reluctant to answer them. Such questions often come across as a trap set by the questioner. If we respond by insisting on adherence to nonviolence, the other person will attack us as fanatical or uncaring. If we respond by making an exception or expressing uncertainty, that person will attack us as inconsistent or hypocritical.
Faced with an apparent trap, a consistent life ethic advocate might understandably choose not to answer the question. Instead, the advocate might raise that obvious objection and point out that such hard cases are rare, extreme situations. Most acts of violence we oppose don’t resemble these examples, and how we deal with unusual hard cases shouldn’t determine how we generally deal with violence.
This response is correct, but the person posing the hard-cases question will probably see it as an evasion. The questioner might come away from the dialog not knowing what the consistent life ethic advocate really thinks about hard cases, while dismissing the advocate for dodging difficult questions.
A response which might move the dialog closer to cooperation could be to say something like “That’s a good question, and I’ll do my best to answer it. Once I do, though, I’d like to ask you a question. Once we’ve both given our answers, let’s talk about them.” The advocate could then give an honest answer to the hard-case question.
After that, the advocate could ask the other person: “What about cases that aren’t as extreme?” What about a pregnancy that isn’t life threatening? A killer who has shown remorse? A terminally ill person who isn’t in unmanageable pain? Do you think abortion or execution or suicide is appropriate in those cases?
Such an approach addresses the hard cases question while encouraging both people to present their beliefs for scrutiny. It steps away from an adversarial relationship toward more of a mutual exchange of views.
Difficult Question #2: Alternatives
Someone might ask, “What’s the alternative?” If we don’t support violence, how do we address the problem or injustice that the violence (supposedly) corrects?
Again, this is a fair question. It’s even more reasonable than the hard-cases questions, since finding alternatives is relevant to all cases of violence, not just hard cases. Yet I think such a question can easily provoke the same kind of wariness and reluctance, for two reasons.
The obvious reason is that the question shifts scrutiny onto the consistent life ethic advocate. Given the variety and complexity of situations of violence, coming up with an adequate, practical nonviolent solution will often be challenging.
The subtler reason is that the advocate might see a request for alternatives as a way of setting unfavorable terms. When the question is “Does a practical alternative to this type of violence exist?” the implied follow-up question might be “If no practical alternative exists, then doesn’t that mean the violence is justified?” The consistent life ethic advocate would understandably see accepting such terms of discussion as conceding too much.
A preferred approach might be first to reject the violence as unacceptable and, with this rejection clearly established, only then consider alternatives.
To illustrate: When the subject of targeted killing by the U.S. government as a counter-terrorism policy comes up, I’ve encountered the “What’s the alternative?” question. How do we stop terrorism if we don’t kill alleged terrorists without trial?
My main reaction is to think “I don’t have to provide an alternative.” We should simply reject assassination as wrong and then, having ruled out such acts, consider what would be acceptable alternative counter-terrorism policies. The same could be said of torture. The notion that assassination or torture should be viewed as “open to consideration pending a practical alternative” strikes me as a very slanted starting point for discussion.
Still, the problem remains that not answering the question “What’s the alternative?” will come across as evasive and not promote constructive dialog. Not providing an alternative is especially unfortunate if the other person is sympathetic to the consistent life ethic advocate’s position but is held back from agreement by the sense that no nonviolent solution is available.
To avoid this problem, proposing a mutual exchange of views again might be helpful. Perhaps when someone asks about the alternative to some type of violence, we could answer as best we can and then pose a question of our own: “Maybe my alternative solution has problems, but since you asked about alternatives, let me ask: Do you think a practical alternative to [this type of violence] would be a good thing? Even if my solution isn’t the best, is it still worth looking for alternatives?”
If the other person agrees to this much, then the consistent life ethic advocate can point to a clear area of common ground. Both people agree the violence being discussed is undesirable and an alternative is worth finding. This might help restore a spirit of cooperation to the discussion.
Conclusion
Dialog with those we disagree with is always challenging, especially when difficult questions are involved. I’m not suggesting my proposed approaches are the best or only ways of handling these questions. I think, however, that consistent life ethic advocates should find honest ways of answering such questions while trying to move dialog from an adversarial to a cooperative stance. I encourage others to develop their own approaches so we can have good, constructive dialogs on life issues.
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For more of our posts on dialog, see:
Tips on Dialogue / Rachel MacNair
Two Practical Dialogue Tips for Changing More Minds about Abortion / Josh Brahm
A Lawyer’s Turnaround on Baby Doe with Her Own Down Syndrome Baby
Sarah Terzo
by Sarah Terzo
Janine Steck Huffman has a child with Down syndrome. But years before she gave birth to her son Nash, she was partly responsible for the legal starvation death of Baby Doe, another child with Down syndrome.
Baby Doe was born in Bloomington, Indiana, in April 1982. Besides Down syndrome, he had esophageal atresia, which prevented him from eating. A simple operation would have enabled him to eat. Without it, he would starve to death.
When Baby Doe’s mother saw him for the first time, she reportedly said, “You look beautiful. You look different from my other two, but I love you anyway.”1
But that was before she learned Baby Doe had Down syndrome.
A doctor at the Bloomington Hospital, Walters Owens, encouraged the Does not to allow the surgery. He told them the child would have a poor quality of life and emphasized what a burden Baby Doe would be on them.
He would later tell reporter Jeff Lyon why he was so determined that Baby Doe should die. Owens’ nephew had a child who was disabled and, as the reporter put it, “malformed.” The child had needed surgery, which was given, and repeated treatment for pneumonia. Owens said:
But the child has never been normal. It learned to walk at the age of four, and it has never learned to talk. It is, at times, aggressive and destructive. My nephew and his wife are very strong people and have handled it. But they’ve had no more children. She has devoted her whole life to caring for this child.
Obviously, this has colored my thinking on the survival of such children. I believe there are things worse than having a child [like that] die. And one of them is that it might live.2
So, because he did not like one disabled child, and did not see the value in that child’s life, he was convinced all disabled babies should die. He spoke at length to the Does and managed to convince them, despite other doctors who wanted to treat the baby.
With Owens looking on, the Does told their team of doctors that they wanted their son to die. According to Lyon:
While his colleagues looked dumbfounded, Owens leaped up to congratulate the father. “You’ve made a wise and courageous choice. Here’s how I look at it. If you let the baby die, you’re going to grieve a little while. But if you go ahead with the surgery, you’re going to grieve for the rest of your lives.”3
Officials at the hospital took Baby Doe’s parents to court. And here is where Janine Huffman comes in. At the time, she was a clerk for Judge John G. Baker. The research she did for him led to his decision to deny Baby Doe the operation. Years later, she would reflect:
When assumptions based on ignorance or outdated information abound, they perpetuate a society that will not embrace or even accept differences.
I understand these misconceptions all too well because I was once one of “them” . . . one of those people with the preconceived notion that a diagnosis of Down syndrome brought nothing but pain to the families involved; that children with the syndrome have no purpose in life and grow up to be adults with no joy or friends . . .
I was asked to research the right to die issue, and that research resulted in legal conclusions that supported the parents, not with those that wanted to adopt Baby Doe. This information made me think that letting this baby go since he will be a “blob,” might be the right thing to do.4
In court, Baby Doe’s parents made the argument that “[Children with Down syndrome] never had a minimally acceptable quality of life.”5
The hospital appealed the ruling.
There was a public outcry. No fewer than 10 couples offered to adopt Baby Doe. One of them was Mike Lorentay, who worked with developmentally disabled children. He said:
I believe that every person, no matter who or what their ages, has a right to live. If need be, I’ll pay for the operation. I’m not well-off, but I’d pay for it and bring the baby back to Canada.6
Nurses in Bloomington Hospital revolted and refused to stand by and let the child starve. Baby Doe had to be transferred to another wing of the hospital, and his parents had to hire private nurses. The case was appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court. Sadly, the Justices ruled against saving Baby Doe. Judge C. Thomas Spencer stated in the ruling:
The Court finds that the state has failed to show that the child’s physical or mental condition is seriously impaired or seriously endangered as a result of the inability, refusal or neglect of his parents to supply the child with necessary food and medical care.7
By now, Baby Doe was dying and suffering greatly. Lyon wrote:
Even as Spencer sat reading his decision at 8 PM on Tuesday night, the infant lay in his incubator, dying. His bodyweight had dropped from lack of nourishment. He was crying from hunger, and his lips were parched from dehydration. His ribs were sticking out, the result of respiratory strain. That afternoon, when the stomach acid started corroding his lungs, he had begun to spit blood.
The nurses did what they could. They turned him over, gave him back rubs, and put glycerin-soaked swabs into his mouth to ease the dryness. They also diligently suctioned the blood from his throat.9
A few days later:
He had begun to hemorrhage freely, the blood oozing from his nose and mouth. Three times Thursday afternoon and evening he had stopped breathing, only to fight his way back.10
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. But Baby Doe ran out of time. After six agonizing days, Baby Doe died.
The nurses who cared for Baby Doe were traumatized by the experience. One nurse, Teleatha McIntosh, said:
I feel that a terrible injustice was done. I couldn’t sleep for a long time afterward. Every time I closed my eyes, I’d see that baby lying there bleeding and fighting for breath . . . . Without a doubt, it was the most inhumane thing I’ve ever been involved in. I had all this guilt, just standing by giving him injections and doing nothing for him.11
Nurse Bonnie Stuart said:
It still seems like a nightmare to me. I still can’t believe it happened in today’s society. I said, “This is wrong,” 50 times a night as I was taking care of him. He wasn’t limp like they said. When I’d give him a shot of Demerol, he’d flinch. He’d open his eyes when I stroked his head. He looked like a perfectly normal little boy.12
Left: Huffman family. Right: Nash Huffman. From Janine Huffman’s blog.
As for Huffman, who contributed to Baby Doe’s death, she gave birth to a child with Down syndrome. Because she did not know the diagnosis when her son Nash was in the womb, she never had a chance to abort him. She found out after he was born. She says that when she found out:
I was in shock. Images ran through my mind of the baby I thought we would have – the baby we wanted to have – and tears started flowing.
I wish I had known then what really lay in store for us. Nash is our source of amazement every day. He is one smart little boy and could recite his ABCs and basic colors, sight-read more than 10 words, and use at least 130 signs of American Sign Language before the age of three. More importantly, he has taught me a lesson I still work through every day – that the value of a life, of a human life, of a child, is measured not by how much he or she can accomplish, but how much he or she can teach others about what really matters. Like how to accept people with all kinds of different “abilities.” Our life is better than good . . .
We are advocates now for Nash and for others with Down syndrome. We also know that Nash will be his own advocate, and that he will make a difference in the world.13
Tragically, Baby Doe never had a chance to advocate for himself, although thousands tried to advocate for him. His death will be remembered as a grave injustice.
Footnotes
- Jeff Lyon “The Death of Baby Doe,” Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1985, p. 12
- Ibid., 13
- Ibid.
- Janine Steck Huffman “It’s Better Than Good” in Kathryn Lynard Soper Gifts: Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome Enrich Their Lives (Bethesda, Maryland: Woodbine House, 2007) 39 – 40
- Quoted in Melinda Tankard Reist Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics (North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex, 2006) 50
- “Race on to Keep Handicapped Baby Alive” Detroit Free Press April 16, 1982
- Jeff Lyon, 17
- Ibid., 17
- Ibid., 17
- Ibid., 23, 16
- Ibid., 23
- Janine Steck Huffman “It’s Better Than Good” in Kathryn Lynard, p. 42-43
- Janine Hoffman’s blog, Mauzy’s Musings, http://mauzysmusings.blogspot.com/
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Editor’s Note: Indiana’s Baby Doe was the case that set Nat Hentoff on the course to be pro-life.
For our posts on a similar topic, see:
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled / Sarah Terzo
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill / Jacqueline H. Abernathy
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean? / Rachel MacNair
Is the Death Penalty Unethical?
by Hannah Cox
Hannah Cox
Is the death penalty unethical? For many years, this was where the debate around capital punishment began (and often ended).
While it’s an important question, especially for those concerned with human ethics or coming from a religious background, it is not necessarily the proper place to start the discussion. This is a theoretical question, and when we’re discussing matters of a public policy, we have to examine the practical application of that policy. This is the real world, not a classroom.
In between the black and white extremes of ethics lies the history and practices of the death penalty, and it is here that we should center our debate.
Capital punishment has (almost) always existed in our country, and we have continued to carry it out even as the rest of the western world has recognized its flaws and moved on to more effective, humane, and affordable solutions to violence.
For many years, the death penalty was carried out quite publicly, with executions performed in public squares, often with great fanfare. The grotesque nature of watching the state murder people in the streets led to the first abolition movement in the U.S. in the mid-19th century. States began to build penitentiaries, move executions inside, and change their laws to reduce the number of capital crimes on their books.
For the next century, the U.S. continued to carry out executions and stand by another type of death penalty – lynchings – which were carried out across the nation with the complicity of the legal system. From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred (that we know of), the overwhelming majority of which were against Black people.
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court briefly overturned the death penalty, finding that it was overrun with racial bias and arbitrariness in sentencing. It’s interesting that the court found the penalty violated the Eight Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment not because it was found to be cruel, but rather because it was so randomly applied that to receive the sentence was “as unusual as being struck by lightning.”
Over the next four years, states tinkered with their laws, trying to make them meet the constitutional standards set by the court. States limited the number of crimes eligible for the sentence. They implemented aggravating and mitigating factors. They sought to ensure that the sentence would be applied only to the “worst of the worst,” no longer be racially motivated, and guard against wrongful convictions. By 1976, several states had usable death penalty statutes, meaning we now have nearly 50 years’ worth of data on the implementation of the modern death penalty.
What the data shows is that the system operates in the exact same manner as it did prior to “reform.”Today, the death penalty is overrun with issues of innocence, arbitrariness in sentencing, racial bias, and waste. Let’s look at the factors.
One person has been exonerated from our death rows for every nine executions. In case you don’t know just how hard it is to be exonerated, it’s really hard. That number should shock everyone, but it actually comes nowhere close to painting the full picture of how many innocent people are sentenced to die, or who have been executed. On top of the number of official exonerees are hundreds of others who had their trials reversed, took Alford Pleas, or who won on appeal.
For any person who claims to care about the sanctity of human life, individual liberty, and certainly the faults of a big government, the innocence issues in the system alone should be enough to do away with this policy. But it gets worse.
When it comes to who gets the death penalty in this country, the heinousness of the crime actually has little to do with it. Instead, it comes down to three other factors: the location of the crime, the socioeconomic status of the defendant, and the race of the defendant and victim.
To date, only two percent of counties bring the vast majority of death penalty cases in this country, and all executions have stemmed from less than 16% of our counties. Most prosecutors recognize it is not a deterrent, it wastes an extraordinary amount of money, and it is an opportunity cost that contributes to fewer crimes being solved. Still, a small percentage use these cases to build their name recognition and climb the career ladder.
It is also telling to see against whom this small group of district attorneys seek death sentences. You won’t find wealthy people on our death rows. Rather, the people you encounter are usually impoverished, had to rely on overworked public defenders with impossible caseloads, and almost always have significant disabilities – severe mental illnesses, intellectual disabilities, and histories with horrific trauma.
And then there’s the explicit racial bias. While about half of all murder victims are black, in 2019 nearly 80% of all new death sentences and 73% of all executions were imposed for cases with white victims. This isn’t a departure from older trends. And the racial combination that is the most likely to result in a death sentence? When the defendant is black and the victim is white.
We value victims differently in this country, plain and simple. We decide that for some victims we will spend millions in excess to pursue the death penalty, whereas for others – 40% of homicide victims to be exact – we don’t even bother to solve their murders. If we want to circle back to the question of ethics, here would be the place.
Is the death penalty ethical? If we had a perfect system and could guarantee its use only for the “worst of the worst” and only when guilt was absolute, should we then condone it? Should that be what we strive for? I would still say no.
I believe all people have value that cannot be won or lost by anything they do or do not do, but rather that stems from all human beings being made in the image of God. I not only believe in the notion of second chances, I have seen the power of redemption. I’ve seen God powerfully work in the lives of those who have committed violence, and I would never want to intervene in what He could do in a person’s life.
It does not matter whether or not you agree with me on these grounds, though. Because it is without question that we are not in a perfect system, that our government has proven itself unable to create a system free of error and racial bias, and that the manner in which we carry out the death penalty is unethical. There’s no defending it.
So, let’s start there, where we should be able to all agree. A system that operates in such a manner must be shut down.
Hannah Cox (upper right) on a panel for the 2020 Rehumanize International conference
Hannah Cox is the Senior National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. Hannah was previously Director of Outreach for the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a free-market think tank. Prior to that, she was Director of Development for the Tennessee Firearms Association and a policy advocate for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
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For more of our posts on the death penalty, see:
Why Conservatives Should Oppose the Death Penalty / Destiny Herndon-de la Rosa
Racism and the Death Penalty / David Cruz-Uribe
For more of our posts on conservative views, see:
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons / Karen Swallow Prior
Making the Case for Peace to Conservatives / John Whitehead
Police Brutality Against Protesters
by Sarah Terzo
In the news there have been multiple cases of police brutality against Black men and women and even Black preborn children.
Those who’ve protested these outrages have also been targeted for brutality. See, for example,In one week there were at least 9 instances of police using excessive force caught on camera and “The protesters had to deescalate the police”: Demonstrators are the ones defusing violence at protests.
This follows a long history of police brutality against those who protest violence, such as previous calls for racial justice, or opposing the American war in Vietnam – which escalated to killing four people at Kent State University.
Add to this set: pro-life protesters. That’s received less press coverage, but belongs on the list. Below are some examples; a fuller account is given here.
The Rescue Movement
The Rescue movement, which occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s, was a massive movement of pro-lifers engaging in civil disobedience. Groups like Operation Rescue gathered thousands of volunteers to block the doors of abortion facilities, preventing abortions from taking place. All pro-life participants signed an agreement to refrain from any type of violence or violent rhetoric. Generally, the group would have a few people designated to speak to the media and to women trying to enter the facility. The rest of the participants were required to be quiet and peaceful, sometimes sitting quietly, sometimes praying, sometimes singing.
These demonstrations were often misrepresented in the media and characterized as being violent. When there was violence, it was nearly always committed by pro-choicers and police against pro-lifers.
Example: Pain Compliance Holds
Pastor and author Randy Alcorn described a rescue he took part in where he both witnessed and experienced excessive force used by police. The police were using something called “pain compliance holds” which consisted of grabbing demonstrators in ways designed to inflict great amounts of pain. The purpose was to force the protesters to cooperate. Protesters planned to go limp and force police to drag or carry them away from the entrances of the abortion facilities. By doing this, and not simply walking away under police orders, they could keep the clinic closed for far longer than they could if they simply obeyed police commands and dispersed when ordered to.
Rather than hauling them off, however, police often used the tactic of inflicting as much pain on the pro-lifers as possible in order to compel them to move away from the clinic entrances. Alcorn says:
It’s now almost 9 o’clock.… The police started dragging us away 30 minutes ago. I remember the look of horror on a college girl from our church, watching from across the street. She’d heard that it can get rough, but couldn’t believe the way bodies were being manhandled, even though no resistance was offered. She covered her eyes and the tears were flowing.1
Rescue veteran John Cavanaugh O’Keefe describes how police used cattle-prod-like devices that inflicted pain through electric shock at one rescue. He describes witnessing one police officer use the device on a pro-life demonstrator’s testicles.2 He also witnessed, and endured, the use of pain compliance holds.
Pro-Lifer James Trott wrote a memoir about his time in the rescue movement. He describes one police officer, who he identifies as Major Burnette.
[M]ajor Burnette’s approach at the clinic was to apply pain compliance methods – to what end we never could figure out. He was not giving us any orders to which to comply. It seems as though he just had been itching to inflict some pain, and now had the opportunity… I still bear some (small) scars of his ineffectual efforts.3
Example: Jailhouse Abuses
An article in the Wall Street Journal by William B Allen on August 18, 1989 describes more horrific abuse inflicted on pro-lifers. The victims were women who were jailed for engaging in peaceful civil disobedience in front of abortion facilities. They were jailed in Pittsburgh and had emotional and physical trauma inflicted on them by Pittsburgh police:
Women – from college age to grandmothers – are dragged by the bottom of their blouses, their breasts exposed to hooting male prisoners… Complaints are filed with an assistant district attorney, who does not process them, allegedly on orders from her superiors.
These female rescuers also testified to being verbally threatened with being stripped and raped.4
A chronically ill rescuer was also abused:
Jailers deliberately blew smoke in the face of one who has serious respiratory problems, in the presence of the nurse who was supposedly there to care for her, to the point that the prisoner could hardly breathe. After 15 minutes of this, the nurse said she couldn’t stand anymore and put an oxygen mask over the rescuer’s face.5
Example: Injuries
Even more horrific abuse took place in Los Angeles. Police chief Robert Vernon armed LA police officers with a weapon consisting of two nightsticks connected with a chain. Officers wrapped these makeshift nunchakus around the arms and legs of demonstrators and twisted them. Police spokespeople claimed that this was done in order to compel pro-lifers to comply with police officers’ orders to leave the facility.
But Trott says:
However, in many cases no orders were being given to the rescuers. Those present reported it looked and felt more like open sadism. Many rescuers were seriously injured. One woman was reported to have miscarried following the treatment, and a film taken at the time captured two officers snapping a man’s arm. Although the cameraman was a considerable distance from the officers and their victim, the “crack” can be heard distinctly in the soundtrack of the film.6
Author Sarah Terzo at protests
Conclusion
This overview of examples shows there was a consistent pattern of brutality in police dealings with pro-life demonstrators during the rescue years. Pro-lifers, who were dedicated to saving lives lost to abortion, virtually never fought back against police brutality. Although some police officers were convicted and punished for brutality against pro-lifers, the vast majority never were.
These are historical examples, because people dedicated to saving lives have discovered that civil disobedience is not as effective in reaching and helping individual women, nor in shutting down the abortion centers. If they maintain legal actions outside the facilities, and pursue their legal rights to be on the sidewalk when challenged, they have a longer presence there. Constant cancelled appointments do more to permanently close a facility than sporadic protest events do. See Sidewalk Advocates for Life for an organization that learns from experience and trains people in effective techniques.
What all this shows is that when it comes to police reform to stop police brutality, the picture is far wider than the important opposition to racial discrimination (which consistent-lifers have always participated in). Nor are current protesters encountering anything new when the brutality is aimed at them. When it comes to ensuring police professionalism when dealing with protesters, no matter what the issue of protest is, all protesters are in this together.
- Randy C. Alcorn Is Rescuing Right? (Downers Grove, Illinois, Inter-Varsity Press, 1990)
- Dennis J. Kenney, Melissa Reuland, Deborah Lamm Weisel A Conflict of Rights: Public Safety and Abortion Clinic Conflict and Violence (Police Executive Research Forum, 1999), page 191
- James H Trott Was That Thunder? A Memoir of Pro-Life Rescue, 1988 – 1997 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Oak and Yew Press, 2015), page 64
- Ibid., page 206
- Ibid.
- Ibid., page 208
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There’s a longer version of this post with many more details:
Here are examples of police brutality against pro-lifers.
For more of our posts on police brutality, see:
Voices on Police Brutality in the Aftermath of the Murder of George Floyd
Police Brutality Against the Preborn
Two Practical Dialogue Tips for Changing More Minds about Abortion
by Josh Brahm
Editor’s Note: while the author applies this to abortion, the same principles apply to dialogue on any issue.
I was standing in the exhibit hall in front of our booth at the Students for Life National Conference a few years ago when a student walked up to me. He had just heard me speak on how to philosophically refute the strongest pro-abortion-choice arguments, so he asked:
Josh Brahm
“Do you change 100% of the minds that you talk to?”
I was taken aback a little, and replied, “No,” and before I could explain further he interjected:
“So, 99% then?”
I exclaimed, “No, not even 50%!”
I could tell he was confused. To him, I should change every mind I talk to because my arguments are better.
So I explained: “If people were perfectly logical robots, then sure, with adequate time, I believe I could get them all to be pro-life. But people are not perfectly logical robots. We are emotionally messy creatures with all kinds of baggage, based on our own experiences, what our parents taught us, what our church teaches, the university we attend, the friends we talk to, and the TV channels or podcasts we listen to, among other things.”
When a pro-abortion-choice college student walks up to my outreach table to talk, they are never walking up as a perfectly reasonable, open-minded person with zero biases. They are in a defensive posture. They have a position they hold on abortion, and they don’t want to change their mind. There’s an invisible wall between us, so when our philosophy team is designing arguments or testing dialogue techniques, we’re always trying to get around that wall. With dialogue techniques, it’s all about helping them change their posture from defensive to receptive and seeing those walls go down. Said another way, I am trying as quickly as possible to make this stranger feel like they’re talking to a friend over coffee, both trying to think more clearly about a topic.
Here are two of the most useful dialogue techniques that our team uses in virtually every conversation that we have:
#1: Be Obviously Open-Minded
Have you ever had a debate with someone who was super closed-minded, meaning there was nothing you (or anybody else) could say that could change their mind? I bet that was a frustrating experience for you. When I’m talking to a closed-minded person, I feel like I’m playing tennis with a brick wall. I might get better as a result of the exercise, but that wall isn’t changing no matter how skilled my tennis moves are, and a closed-minded person isn’t changing no matter how persuasive my arguments are.
I want someone to be willing to talk to me for a long time, because it usually takes a long time for someone to even have a chance to see all of their primary arguments refuted, preparing them to change their own mind about the topic. Therefore, I should demonstrate that I’m open-minded by speaking what we call “open-mindedese.” That means saying the kinds of things only open-minded people say, like, “I might be wrong, but the reason I currently believe this is X,” or “I don’t want to believe false things, so correct me if I’m wrong, but Y . . .”
If the idea of a pro-life leader like me being open-minded about abortion makes you a little uncomfortable, you’re not alone. This topic freaks a lot of people out because they think that being open-minded means being wishy-washy. As I explain in the Equipped for Life Course:
[Being open-minded] means having the humility to believe something based on having good reasons, not because you’re too stubborn to believe anything else. I’m open-minded about abortion because I know what kind of arguments it would take to prove to me that abortion should be legal. I’m not concerned about quitting my day job though, because I’m really confident that those arguments don’t work.
But here’s the key: what is driving my confidence? Is it mere dogma? Is it because my parents raised me that way? No, it’s because I’m following the evidence where it leads, and I’m committed to believing what is true.
#2: Rephrase What They Said
Pro-choice rhetoric can often be vague, and we want to make clarity entirely our responsibility. I don’t merely attempt to make sure they understand what I’m saying, but I also want to make sure I accurately understand what they are saying.
The problem is, even if I’m listening carefully, my brain still sometimes misinterprets what people say, especially when I’m talking to someone from a different cultural background than mine. I think of it like those funny videos in which a singer plugs the lyrics from a famous song into Google Translate and runs it from English to Spanish, then from Spanish to French, and then from French back into English, and then records those lyrics. They come out funny because Google Translate isn’t perfect, and the more iterations you add, the further the words get from the original meaning.
That is why after the person I’m speaking to explains their view, I say something like, “I want to make sure I understand you. Let me repeat back to you what I heard you say, so you can correct me if I’ve gotten it wrong. It sounded to me like you said . . .” and then I rephrase her view in my own words, and ask her to correct me if I got anything wrong.
Sometimes it takes a few tries before she approves of my summary, but that’s okay. People have complicated views about abortion, and it’s well worth a few minutes of my time to understand her perspective instead of just responding to a carbon copy picture in my head of what pro-choice people think.
Then when I make my argument, she knows I’m not about to strawman her, and she is listening carefully to what I have to say, because she knows that I truly understand her view. Only then do I have a chance of changing her mind.
To learn more practical dialogue tips, read our other articles on that topic on our blog archive. Finally, consider purchasing the Equipped for Life Course, which has seven more practical dialogue tips and the most persuasive pro-life arguments we’ve tested in thousands of conversations on college campuses.
Josh Brahm is the President and Co-Founder of Equal Rights Institute, an organization that trains pro-life advocates to think clearly, reason honestly, and argue persuasively. They use speaking, writing, YouTube videos, podcasts, online courses, and campus outreach to train pro-life advocates in the areas of practical dialogue tips, relational apologetics, pro-life philosophy, and sidewalk counseling.
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For another of our blog posts about dialog, see Tips on Dialogue.
#Rehumanize2020: Experiences of a Virtual Conference
Aimee Murphy, Introductory Keynote
John Whitehead
As always, our friends at member group Rehumanize International did a great job of bringing together a diverse group of activists to discuss an array of issues encompassed by the consistent life ethic—with the added technical accomplishment this year of doing it all online! Indeed, diversity was one recurring theme of the presentations that made a particular impression on me.
Herb Geraghty, Rehumanize’s Outreach Director, spoke about the importance of “radical inclusivity.” This goal, Herb argued, should guide not only whom activists strive to protect from violence but also whom activists are willing to work with.
Top: Jazzi Milton, Pro-Life San Francisco / Herb Geraghty, moderator .
Bottom: Kristen Day, Democrats for Life / Tom Shakely, Americans United for Life
Later, a panel discussion on pro-life activism (pictured above) discussed the value of many different types of diversity: racial, religious, and political diversity among activists, but also diversity of focus. Some activist groups may address several different life issues, while others focus on one specific issue; the panelists talked about the advantages of both approaches.
In a breakout talk about Creative Expression, Rehumanize’s Creative Projects Director Maria Oswalt and Consistent Life Board Member Sarah Terzo spoke about how art can be used to promote respect for life. This talk touched on the value of another kind of diversity, diversity of talents. People whose abilities or interests or life situation draw them toward artistic expression should pursue that form of activism. Maria emphasized the importance of doing what you have a talent and passion for, rather than vainly trying to do all types of activism simultaneously. I thought this was a valuable—and heartening—piece of advice.
Julia Smucker
As usual, this conference was jam-packed with edifying content. As with previous in-person conferences I’ve attended, I appreciated the format Rehumanize has developed featuring multiple mainstage keynote speakers and panels, ensuring that all attendees got the chance to hear from a diverse set of speakers on a healthy variety of consistent-life issues. Two back-to-back panels – one on police, prisons and the death penalty, and the other on pro-life perspectives – provided rich conversation among people working on the same issues from a range of personal backgrounds and approaches.
Panel on Police, Prisons, and the Death Penalty. Top: Miea Walker, Forward Justice / Zuri Davis, Reason / Hannah Cox, Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty. Bottom: Herb Geraghty, moderator / Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action
I was particularly heartened to see a stronger position on ethical and practical reasoning for opposing war sketched out by David Swanson of World Beyond War as a keynote presentation, while still finding it unsettling that attendees at a CLE conference remain more evenly divided on making exceptions for this form of violence than for most others.
Differing views throughout the conference, however, were nuanced and respectful. Although I missed the in-depth conversations and personal connections of an in-person conference, the chat feature intriguingly allowed for ongoing discussion of presentations in real time.
A final highlight was the Create/Encounter “release party” showcasing the winners of the annual creative writing & art contests, with an especially strong set of written submissions.
All in all, our friends at Rehumanize did their usual impressive job (even under unusual circumstances) of pulling a full, mutually encouraging and thought-provoking conference together. Bravi.
Richard Stith
As organizer Herb Geraghty said at the beginning, we need to practice “radical inclusivity”. By that, Herb meant, we must be inclusive not only regarding the people we are for, but we are also inclusive regarding the people we are with. We don’t dehumanize anyone among those with whom we are fighting, nor even among our opponents. No one should be addressed with hateful language.
Terrisa Bukovinac
Terrisa Bukovinac emphasized that Operation Rescue was originally a completely non-violent movement of passive sit-ins by those who wished to take upon themselves a part of the violence against the unborn. Where possible, let us participate in that non-violent, peaceful movement to reach out at the last moment to the women who are about to undergo abortions inside abortion clinics.
Rachel MacNair
The advantages of an in-person conference are great enough that when we can again I’ll still want to take the travel and lodging in order to experience it. But the conference on Hopin had a huge advantage: there were over 250 people attending, much more than usual, and some of them were from other countries. I’ve seen this also in other conferences in 2020. The on-line format increases the number of participants, and sometimes dramatically.
The program and speakers were excellent, as usual. The “table” wasn’t terribly useful. While we normally have many people coming by, perusing our lit, and chatting, this year we only had one person show his face that wasn’t already active with the group. An on-line “expo” section didn’t cut it.
But I do think one of the developments that will happen due to Covid-19 is the hybrid conference. In some cases, live-streaming speeches and piping in questioners has been done. But it may be better to just ask speakers if they’re willing to do it twice: once in-person, and once online, so they can adapt to the advantages of each, and reach far more people. Adding an on-line component used to be a complication and one that requires learning an extra skill set. But now we’ve been forced to develop the skill set, so adding it on might become simply standard.
Top: Greta Zarro, “Abolishing War” / Tony Guajardo, “The Non-Aggression Princple and the Consistent Life Ethic (libertarian). Bottom: Rachel Peller, “Feminism and the Consistent Life Ethic”
Thad Crouch
As a peace-focused activist, I was thrilled to have World BEYOND War’s David Swanson, 5X Nobel Peace Prize nominee, address a CLE crowd on the issue of whether war can ever be just. I was also reminded of how much I like Aimee Murphy’s presentation that moves from her own personal traumatic story, to relatable experiences of relative innocence, to philosophical arguments, to her powerful assertion that human rights for all humans is central to the CLE. While I missed seeing, talking, and hugging friends, the thoughtful diverse chat comments during presentations were a delight — as was video chats with friends in the CLN booth.
John Kelly
That said, the Not Dead Yet speaker, John Kelly, moved me more than I expected. The killing of Michael Hickson was literally close to home for me, only one mile. Yet John Kelly’s presentation brought the lives lost to euthanasia and assisted suicide closer to my heart than ever.
Some Slides from David Swanson’s Keynote
Police Brutality Against the Preborn
by Sarah Terzo
Police brutality, which disproportionately affects Black men and women, has been in the news with the horrible deaths of Breanna Taylor and George Floyd, among others. Protests have erupted throughout the country over the past few months. Preborn babies are not exempt from dying by police violence. In fact, there have been numerous cases where a preborn baby has been a victim of excessive force by police.
Emerald Black and Her Baby
Emerald Black, a pregnant Black woman, was riding with her fiancé when the couple’s car was pulled over by police for having “bad registration tags.” Her fiancé had been driving her home from the hospital. At the hospital, she and her fiancé were informed that she was at risk for miscarriage. On the ride home, she was still dressed in a hospital gown.
The police ordered her out of the car. Allegedly, she explained to them that she was at risk for miscarriage and asked if she could stay sitting. What happened next, according to the lawsuit, is that police “yanked Ms. Black from the car, taunted her, piled on top of her and stomped on her stomach leaving a shoe mark.” She suffered a miscarriage soon after the policeman allegedly stomped on her stomach.
Emerald Black had not committed any crime and was not accused of any. She was just a passenger in a car that was stopped for a minor traffic violation. No charges were filed against her.
Black’s lawyer, Patrick Buelna, said that:
[Police] had no probable cause or even reasonable suspicion to use any force whatsoever against Plaintiff. Therefore, the use of any force was unlawful and excessive . . . If officers were adamant about her exiting the car, they should have simply, and gently, assisted Ms. Black getting out of the car. Instead, they treated her like she had just committed a violent felony.
Black is suing for the loss of her baby, physical injuries, emotional distress, and lost wages from missing work due to injuries she sustained.
The incident occurred in 2019 in California and concerned the San Leandro Police Department.
Kenya Harris and Her Baby
Another case of police brutality against a pregnant woman and a preborn baby took place in Georgia. According to a $50,000 lawsuit, Kenya Harris suffered injuries and a miscarriage after she was brutally beaten by police officers Ryan Jenkins and Richard Brown Jr. Harris had not been detained for any crime. Rather, she had come to the Albany Police Department because her son was arrested. She waited five hours at the police station. Then she told officer Jenkins that she could not stay because she had other children she needed to take care of at home. According to the lawsuit, Jenkins did not like the “tone” of her voice.
He, along with the other officer, allegedly assaulted Harris and beat her so badly that she suffered a miscarriage.
An article in the Daily Mail describes the assault:
Jenkins reportedly grabbed the expectant mother by the neck, before ‘slamming her to the ground’, causing her to fall unconscious. When she woke up, Jenkins was sitting on her, the suit states.
‘Defendant Officer Jenkins, without provocation, grabbed the plaintiff, who weighs less than one hundred twenty (120) pounds, by her neck and slammed her to the ground,’ it reads.
‘Plaintiff momentarily blacked out and came to with defendant Officer Jenkins sitting on her back, and with his knee on her arm. Plaintiff was pregnant at the time.’
Jenkins handcuffed Harris, then allegedly threw her against a wall.
Injured and fearing for her baby, Harris begged to be allowed to go to a hospital. Police ignored her pleas and locked her in a jail cell. She was held overnight. The next day, out on bail, she went to a medical facility and discovered that her baby had died. She was also treated for what were described as “serious injuries.”
Martini Smith and Her Baby
Martini Smith, a 20-year-old Black woman from Ohio, was pregnant when she was arrested in a domestic disturbance and taken to jail. She had stabbed her boyfriend in self-defense and was being charged with a misdemeanor. The charge against her was later dropped. At the jail, she was tasered. There is a video of the incident.
Male police officers stripped her naked from the waist up, and she was ordered to remove her nose ring. According to a video of the incident, she tried to comply but was unable to remove the nose ring because her fingers were numb from being in tight handcuffs for six hours.
As she struggled to obey the officers, one officer, identified as Corporal Matthew Stice, tasered her and she fell against the wall and then to the ground. When she was able to speak, she said to him, “’Why did you Tase me? I wasn’t harming nobody. I can’t just take it out.’
She lost her baby due to the police action.
She reached a settlement with the city for $27,500, but this cannot compensate for the loss of her child.
Between 2000 and 2017, 104 people died in the same jail as a result of being tasered. All but two were unarmed at the time.
Dangers
Two other incidents could have led to the death of preborn babies, but fortunately did not.
Miami police officer Jody Martel was arrested and charged with battery and official misconduct after he used excessive force during the arrest of Safiya Satchell, who was pregnant. Satchell went into premature labor as a result of Martel’s actions. According to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle, Martel “went into Satchell’s car without any evidence that she had committed a crime.” A video of the incident shows Martel reaching into Satchell’s car and Satchell saying, “Don’t reach into my car.” The video then shows Martel dragging Satchell from the car and tasering her, then choking her by putting his knee on her neck. This is the same police move that killed George Floyd.
Satchell then went into premature labor. Fortunately, she and her baby both survived.
There was another incident where off-duty police officer Ambar Pacheco kicked a pregnant woman, Evoni Murray, in the stomach and caused her to go into premature labor. Murray was visibly pregnant and was eight months along. Pachecho and her sister attacked Murray and her companion, Joseph Predelus, in a Miami neighborhood. The two sisters believed that Predelus and Murray were talking about them. The two victims denied the allegation.
According to Pacheco, she lost her temper and “beat the s** t” out of Murray. The officer who arrested Ambar Pacheco said Murray “appeared to be in severe pain.” She was also having contractions. Fortunately, she gave birth to a healthy, albeit premature, baby at a local hospital.
The new mother says that she hopes Pacheco “gets her life together and gets the help that she needs.” Pacheco faces up to 15 years in jail for the assault.
Conclusion
These incidents show that preborn children are not immune to death or injury at the hands of police who use excessive force. Most of these women had not committed a crime. Even people who do commit a crime don’t deserve to be beaten, kicked, or tasered if they’re not resisting, whether or not they’re carrying an innocent and helpless preborn child.
Pro-lifers should care about babies who die by police violence. A baby killed by a rogue police officer is just as dead as one killed by abortion. And pro-lifers should be concerned for the mothers too – as well as everyone else killed or injured by police brutality.
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Addendum, September 1, 2020: Clarification
Since this blog post was published, a claim was made that Emerald Black’s story wasn’t true and that there was police body cam footage contradicting it. The original story came from Newsweek and The Daily Mail. After some digging, I found a blog that claimed body cam footage showed Emerald Black admitting she had miscarried at the hospital. It was difficult to find the footage, but I eventually did. While it did contradict Black on some minor points, the bulk of it confirmed her story. Here are some things from the video:
- When the car was pulled over, Emerald Black said to the police “I have something for you,” and then reached towards the floor of the car. Police immediately drew their guns and demanded she put her hands up, which she did.
- Police officers then decided to arrest her for reaching for a weapon. When they accused Black of this, she said she was reaching for her wallet.
- The police insisted that she had a weapon, saying that, “we didn’t ask you for ID.” This ignores the fact that it is common knowledge that police ask for identification and Black could’ve simply anticipated that request.
- No weapon was found in the car after the arrest and no charges were pressed against Black.
- However, Black in her deposition did not give a reason why the police dragged her from the car. The video shows that there was a reason, even though the reason turned out to be unfounded.
- In the introduction to the video, police said that the video showed Black admitting she had just had a miscarriage, thus meaning that the police could not have caused it. However, I watched the video twice and never heard Black make that statement. It’s true there were times the police and Black were yelling and/or talking over each other. But I never heard Black say that she had already miscarried, only that she had come from the hospital. She said repeatedly, “I just came back from the hospital.” At one point, she also said, “You don’t know what happened today.” In this, she could have been referring, as her deposition claimed, to the fact that doctors told her her baby was in danger of miscarriage. Neither of these are admissions that she had already had the miscarriage.
- The video shows police dragging Black from the car and throwing her to the ground. We hear her screaming and eventually cursing at the cops. But I did not see her struggling with the cops before she was thrown down.
- After she is thrown to the ground, the angle of the camera doesn’t allow us to see what the cops did next. The video, therefore, could not prove or disprove that she was kicked. However, we can hear Black shout at one point, “Don’t kick me in the stomach!” Multiple cops were involved in the arrest and were actively using physical force or restraining Black as she lay on the ground. But it was impossible to see what exactly was happening.
- Interestingly, if each cop was equipped with a body cam, it is notable that the police only released the footage from one – and the footage from the one they chose to release doesn’t show what happened while Black was on the ground.
- The video cannot determine to what extent Black was struggling with police on the ground or what they were doing in response.
The claim was also made by the police that the couple was not pulled over due to a broken taillight. Rather, police said that Black and her companion had just been to a convenience store where they purchased alcohol. Rather than checking out, Black’s companion left the money for the purchase on the counter. Therefore, no crime was committed – the alcohol was paid for; it wasn’t stolen. However, the owner of the store called the police anyway, and the police decided to apprehend the couple for reasons unknown. Whether these reasons had to do with race cannot be determined. However, it doesn’t seem to be common police practice to hunt down people who have not committed a crime.
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For our posts on similar topics, see:
Voices on Police Brutality in the Aftermath of the Murder of George Floyd
Ireland’s New Silence and Its 6,666 Victims
by Maria Horan
At the end of June, the Irish government released its first official abortion report: 6,666 abortions in 2019, with another 375 women traveling to the United Kingdom for abortions. Prior to abortion being legalized in Ireland, the number of Irish women traveling to the UK for abortions had been declining. Even the pro-abortion Irish Times admitted that in 2015 the number of Irish women going to the UK for abortions—3,451—was the lowest since 1980.
Before the 2018 referendum repealing the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protecting the unborn, the then-Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Leo Varadkar assured the Irish public that if legalized, abortion would be rare. He had claimed that only 60 GPs would be needed to deliver abortion pills, as approximately 6 Irish women a day sought abortions. With his estimates, this would have been around 2,190 women per annum, almost one-third of the numbers that have been released.
A major selling point of repealing the Eighth Amendment had been that the majority of abortions would be via abortion pills, distributed by GPs, who would receive €450 per abortion. With new figures released, €2.9 million was paid to GPs for such abortions in 2019. The Prolife Campaign states that approximately 6,542 abortions by pill were performed. (The cost of surgical abortions for 2019 has not yet been released.)
It is worth noting that in 2019, the Irish Department of Health spent €3.1 million on the National Women and Infants Health Programme, which means that the Irish government spent nearly as much on killing pre-born children as supposedly protecting them. In 2019, former Minister for Health, Simon Harris depleted most of the money from the National Maternity Strategy to fund abortions, contributing to two mothers’ deaths on maternity wards. A patient advocate’s resignation due to this funding abuse. Ironically, the Strategy had been set up after the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar, who died of sepsis and not denial of abortion as the media had claimed.
Varadkar claimed that if abortions weren’t legalized in Ireland, a woman was going to die from abortion pills bought online. And yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, he gave Minister for Health Simon Harris permission to post them out to women who are under ten weeks pregnant with remote medical consultations instead of physical checkups. This is despite Harris’ previous claim that no telemed abortions would occur.
We will probably never know how many Irish women suffered abortion complications such as hemorrhaging or death during COVID-19. At least two women in the UK have died from abortion pills in the last few months, and many others have suffered complications, ectopic pregnancies and the possible murder of a child born alive after the mother ingested pills at a late stage in her pregnancy.
Those who reluctantly voted to remove protections for the unborn somehow failed to look across the Irish Sea and observe that in the UK, abortion numbers continue to rise as they have done since the 1967 Abortion Act. They have now surpassed 200,000 a year. One brave young Irish woman who campaigned for “yes” and said she told people that legalizing abortion would lower rates was shocked by the abortion numbers released, admitted that she was wrong and has since become pro-life.
Pre-Referendum Promises Broken
One by one, every pre-referendum promise made by the pro-repeal politicians is being broken.
Ireland’s maternity hospitals, now being used to perform surgical abortions, no longer have room for pro-life OB/GYNs. Despite assurances that pro-life doctors wouldn’t be forced to perform abortions, only a month after the legalization of abortion, in February 2019, the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin (where both my husband and I were born) advertised positions for consultants “willing to contribute to the provision of termination of pregnancy services.”
When obstetrician and 2019 AAPLOG annual conference speaker Dr. Trevor Hayes decided with his colleagues that their hospital in Kilkenny was not a suitable location for surgical abortions, Simon Harris attempted to bully Hayes and his colleagues into providing abortions, which they have continued to refuse to perform.
Ireland’s public health services provider, the HSE is currently planning a retraining program for pro-life medical staff to ensure that they are with the new abortion program.
Despite being informed by “an Garda Síochána” (the Irish police force) that it is not necessary and even Leo Varadkar admitted it may be unconstitutional, the Irish government is currently trying to pass a law to ban pro-life vigils outside hospitals and GPs’ clinics.
Such is the contempt that the Irish government now has for pro-life groups that Simon Harris promised to stamp out crisis pregnancy centers that offer the only lifeline and support available to many pregnant women and girls in desperation. These centers receive no government funding.
Even the attempt to collect data on abortion, standard in the UK and other nations, was shouted down by pro-abortion Irish politicians, claiming that such amendments to the law legalizing abortion were simply to shame Irish women. One TD [member of the Irish parliament], Joan Burton, bizarrely suggested that questions on ethnicity were reminiscent of South African apartheid. Another, Brid Smith claimed that the data-gathering amendments were “filled with malice.”
And now “Abortion Rights Campaign” (ARC) is pushing for later abortions due to the fact that 375 women still went to the UK last year for terminations, due to being over 12 weeks pregnant (before which point no reason for abortion needs to be given) but not having a “fatal foetal anomaly.” ARC’s ultimate goal is abortion for absolutely anyone who wants it for any reason, fully Irish taxpayer-funded.
It is worth observing that abortion is currently the only medical procedure that is completely free in Ireland, due to a two-tiered healthcare system, where two-thirds of the population pay for all their own medical expenses (including many low-income families who earn too much to qualify) and that of the other third, who receive a medical card and receive a wide range of services for free.
Ignorance is Bliss
As a spokesperson of the Iona Institute commented, ignorance is bliss. Irish abortion advocates do not want questions to be asked. As far as they’re concerned, every abortion was needed, each was a victory, and coercion and ambivalence about abortions do not exist.
When I contacted “Together for Yes” campaigner Bernie Linnane about her thoughtless remarks that Ireland’s abortions had been “6,666 victories,” she complained that my letter had upset her secretary and that my accurate facts, statistics, and evidence were “ill-advised comments.” Now that they have accomplished their goal, Irish abortion advocates are no longer interested in discussing abortion.
In the Irish Times letters section two days before the abortion referendum in May 2018, one Dublin woman commented:
Those expressing concern about the introduction of a ”culture of abortion” to Ireland may be reassured to know that in countries where abortion is made legal and safe, rates of abortion have been shown to decline significantly over time. In fact, the abortion rate in countries where termination of pregnancy is tightly restricted or outlawed remains higher than that in countries where it is accessible in a safe and regulated manner. The evidence is very clear. Ireland already has an abortion rate, and legalising abortion is very unlikely to make that rate higher.
Despite the lack of logic and evidence in her letter, the IT published it. This was typical of the letters that were published on a daily basis before the referendum.
Shrouded in Shame?
For many years, we Irish were told that women’s reproductive lives in Ireland had been shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the Catholic Church. And yet hidden pregnancies in Ireland appear to have now merely become hidden abortions, still silenced and censored. Concealed abortions that were previously performed in Britain have simply become concealed abortions in Ireland, where the government isn’t even interested in properly recording them and the nation’s abortion advocates don’t want to discuss them.
This is eerily reminiscent of a former era where pregnant Irish women were frequently hidden away in Magdalen laundry homes, their identities and stories erased. This is exactly what is happening in 2020, except it is the now Irish government, not the Catholic Church, that has stepped in to police and monitor what the public is being told about crisis pregnancies in Ireland.
Ireland is still “shrouded in shame,” only now it is women’s shame of coming forward and admitting that they didn’t want an abortion, that they felt abandoned by the Irish medical system, that they were left alone in their crisis, with no real choices. Many people in Ireland are now too afraid to criticize the new status quo, so they choose to remain shamefully silent rather than face the repercussions.
Shortly before the referendum in May 2018, Leo Varadkar stated that GPs would not be permitted to refuse to refer women for abortion services through their conscientious objection, as to do so was the equivalent of telling women “you’re on your own, love.” And yet this is exactly where Irish women are being left – on their own, to self-abort, with no proper alternatives to abortion, no real support to continue their pregnancies, no willing discussion of where abortion is at in Ireland, after the first pitifully poor records have been released to the public. It’s a pity that Varadkar lacked sufficient self-reflection to realize the true meaning of his statement.
Pesky Pro-Lifers
And yet the pesky pro-lifers have not gone away, much to the irritation of so many Repealers. On the 3rd of July, Rally for Life hosted its fifteenth Rally, this time a virtual one due to COVID-19, featuring lots of local and international speakers, including Live Action’s Lila Rose and March for Life’s Jeanne Mancini. The number of people who watched Rally For Life live events was 40,000. The organizers plan to grow the numbers to 400,000 online. All videos are currently available online as replays. At least thirty-two local rallies joined Rally For Life as well, in socially distant witnesses, thus demonstrating that the pro-life voice in Ireland fights on, despite the increasingly hostile opposition to such views.
It’s also worth noting that Ireland’s pro-life vote in 2018 to save the Eighth Amendment was just under 33%, a similar number to the Irish who voted against establishing the Eighth Amendment in 1983. Being in the minority did not deter Ireland’s abortion advocates for the next 35 years. In global terms, a third of the electorate in a Western nation having voted against the legalization of abortion is a high number indeed, and it is something that Ireland needs to celebrate and develop. There is a saying in the Irish language: “Beidh lá eile ag an bPaorach,” meaning that we will live to fight another day. Ireland will have her moment again.
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For more of our posts from Maria Horan about Ireland, see:
Sinn Féin and the New Legacy of Violence
The Referendum on Abortion in Ireland: The Violation of Rights
Northern Ireland’s New Colonialism
Ireland’s Votes for Violence: Sinn Féin and Abortion
Tear Gas and Miscarriages
by Sarah Terzo
Major protests against police brutality have occurred around the U.S. in recent weeks. While many demonstrators were peaceful, some rioting occurred. There are many documented cases of police using tear gas and other chemical agents on both violent and nonviolent protesters. A New York Times article says that chemical agents were used on protesters in at least 100 American cities.
There’s a very compelling reason why pro-life activists should be concerned about tear gas: a great deal of anecdotal evidence and one study showing that tear gas may be an abortifacient that can cause miscarriages.
Protesters react to tear gas at George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C. Licensed by Creative Commons. Author: Rosa Pineda
Evidence
A 2012 report on the use of tear gas against civilians in Bahrain documented many miscarriages linked to tear gas. Investigators from Physicians for Human Rights interviewed women and medical professionals. They were able to examine ultrasounds and medical records to document many of the miscarriages.
The report states:
Local medical professionals also reported to PHR that they had begun to associate miscarriage with women’s exposure to toxic chemical agents.
One obstetrician/gynecologist said that she had seen an increase in miscarriages—especially in the first trimester—in her practice at a private hospital in a predominately Shi’a community exposed to toxic chemical agents.
Two other female physicians, who live in neighborhoods regularly saturated with toxic chemical agents, also reported an increase in miscarriages among their patients; one physician exposed to toxic chemical agents reported she herself had recently developed abnormal menstrual periods and suspected a miscarriage.
A nurse who works at Salmaniya Hospital told PHR investigators, “There are many, many miscarriages. We believe the miscarriage rate has increased, although there is no quantitative evidence. What I want to know is: What is this gas . . . and what will be the future complications?”1
The women who were interviewed told investigators that when they went to the hospital while miscarrying, doctors asked them where they were from and told them they were seeing many similar cases:
One woman from Sitra who miscarried during her 11th week of pregnancy reported that the first question her doctor had asked her, after finding that her baby had no heartbeat, was whether there were problems related to “political unrest” in her village. Presumably, this doctor knew that political unrest in a village implied that toxic chemical agents would be omnipresent.2
Many other women reported miscarriages but were unable to get their medical records. According to one woman:
Many Bahraini women are suffering from the psychological effects of losing a baby and extreme fear. They are not able to speak out and they lack their medical records. The hospitals are not giving us the medical records to document the miscarriages and the birth defects that are happening, so I must speak out.3
Miscarriages after tear gas were also seen among Palestinian women in 1988 when tear gas was heavily used in the occupied Palestinian territories. According to the UN, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas cannisters into enclosed spaces such as houses, schools, and even hospitals. In one case, multiple patients had to be evacuated from a hospital, and 41 Palestinians died from these chemical attacks.Many of them were infants. Women also had miscarriages.
A report from the AP says:
Among the victims was a 35-year-old woman in the Gaza Strip who died along with her unborn child after going into labor prematurely as a result of inhaling tear gas, the U.N. representative said.
He said the gas apparently causes muscle spasms that can cause miscarriage, and dozens of such cases have been reported.
A study at the University of Chile linked miscarriages with tear gas and actually led to the Chilean government banning the use of it by their police. Andrei Tchernitchin, a toxicology expert at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Chile, said of the study, “There’s a probability that the chemical substances in tear gas can affect reproductive function, damage the fetus in the last trimester of pregnancy and children in the first years of life.
Denver and Aurora police departments firing tear gas, flash bangs, and pepper rounds at protesters in front of the Denver capitol. Licensed by Creative Commons. Author: Caravaggibro
Dealing with Counter-Arguments
Col. Ranaan Gissin, a military spokesman, did not deny that a large number of miscarriages occurred but claimed they were the result of “stress” on the women due to being involved in riots:
According to doctors, not just Israeli doctors, when pregnant women participate in riots their blood pressure goes up and they have miscarriages caused by overexcitement, not by tear gas.
This ignored the fact that, according to a spokesman for the UN, most women were at home and not protesting, much less rioting, when they were exposed to tear gas.
The Washington Post described one typical case:
For two days, Ikkram Said, a slender, 27-year-old woman who was four months pregnant, said she could smell fumes wafting into her courtyard from outside. Even with the windows closed, she said, her eyes stung, she coughed constantly and had trouble breathing. Then one day she noticed blood when she went to the toilet and became frightened.
She had a friend drive her to the camp’s United Nations health clinic and was advised to go to Shifa Hospital in nearby Gaza City. By the time she got there she had stomach cramps and uterine contractions. Soon after, she miscarried.
The article spoke of local doctors:
While they concede they lack hard data and autopsy results to verify many of their claims, these sources contend the weight of circumstantial evidence clearly indicates that tear gas is at least a significant contributing factor in deaths and miscarriages among a refugee camp population that, even in the best of times, is in a precarious state of health.
UNRWA’s chief health officer in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Samir Badri, was quoted saying:
There is until now no solid scientific proof, but certainly the accumulated evidence is strongly incriminating.
When you see a woman with no previous history of miscarriages or bleeding, and after exposure to tear gas she bleeds and aborts, you can say safely it is the gas.
It turns out that much of the tear gas that was used in Israel was manufactured in the U.S. A Report to House of Representatives titled “ISRAEL Use of U.S.-Manufactured Tear Gas in the Occupied Territories” tried to debunk the link between tear gas and miscarriages by saying:
Although allegations of large numbers of spontaneous abortions and miscarriages were widespread in the Palestinian community, the physicians who the factfinding group spoke with had found no obvious change in the rate.4
The authors make the argument that there was no increase in miscarriages in official statistics. However, the Washington Post says:
Medical experts say . . . accurate statistics . . . are largely unobtainable in the chaos of civil unrest and military crackdown that has reigned in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since December.
The argument that tear gas isn’t statistically linked to miscarriages ignores the fact that medical records may not be accurate in an impoverished, chaotic area in the middle of civil unrest.
Also, another reporter states:
According to physicians at one hospital in Gaza . . . .over 35 deaths of foetuses had occurred in the last three months of pregnancy in their hospital alone, all from tear gassing. One should bear in mind that this is one hospital which serves one sector of Gaza, and many cases from the refugee camps do not reach the hospital. Doctors say that most cases are not reported, as mothers are fearful of military retaliation at hospitals and simply recover at home. The same applies throughout the West Bank.5
This further suggests the miscarriage rate may be higher than the official statistics show.
Interestingly, after denying that miscarriages increased, the report to the House says in the very next sentence that the increase in miscarriages was caused by “other factors, such as the stress and excitement of being present during a violent confrontation,” thus contradicting itself.
Those who try to debunk the miscarriage/tear gas link generally rely on a study done on rats and rabbits, which exposed pregnant animals to tear gas for five minutes on several consecutive days. All the animals carried their pregnancies to term. However, the rats that were injected with tear gas gave birth to litters with “skeletal deformities.” showing that there is a potential for the tear gas to cause problems.6 The study design was quite cruel; further humane research is needed for a definitive answer.
But it is clear that doctors on the front lines and women who miscarried believe there is a connection.
Footnotes
- Richard Sollom, Holly G. Atkinson, Physicians for Human Rights “Weaponizing Tear Gas: Bahrain’s Unprecedented Use of Toxic Chemical Agents Against Civilians” CUNY Academic Works August 2012, pgs 28-29
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Donald E Wagner “CS Tear Gas a Form of Chemical Warfare?” “Developments in the West Bank and Gaza, May 1990” Hearing Before the Subcommittees on Europe and the Middle East and on Human Rights and International Organizations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, One Hundred First Congress, Second Session, May 9, 1990
- Ibid.
- Eugene J. Olajos, Harry Salem “Riot Control Agents: Pharmacology, Toxicology, Biochemistry and Chemistry” JOURNAL OF APPLIED TOXICOLOGY 21, 2001 pgs 355–39
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For more of our posts on similar topics, see:
Voices on Police Brutality in the Aftermath of the Murder of George Floyd
Police Brutality to the Preborn / Sarah Terzo